What Spring Looks Like Here: Happy Earth Day

As I said earlier this month, spring feels especially reluctant to show up this year. 

And yet, when I look, I can see the signs around me!

We're feeding birds again (in spite of the mess they make on the deck) because there's nothing more tragic than a wistful junco on the deck in the morning. They're moving through on their way north, and we want to give them the wherewithal to get there. 

Speaking of morning, the sun is coming up to the left of the Pass Lake Gap. We're one month into the season, and the sun will continue to move left until the summer solstice. It's so fun to be able to watch it, even though the sunrises still reflect on lake ice instead of a liquid version of Lake Superior.

This morning I heard my first white-throated sparrow!

It's also "park the car at the end of the driveway" season. Our driveway is unpaved, so lakes appear as the snow melts, and as I have whined before, this year there's PLENTY OF SNOW TO MELT. A cause for celebration, in theory. 

All the high temps are above freezing, and almost all of the lows for the past week have been above freezing as well. 

See? Perhaps the signs are more subtle than crocus and forsythia blooming, the way they did in Oklahoma in my youth. But they're there. And we appreciate them. 

Happy Earth Day. As the Artemis II mission reminded us, this planet is the only one we have. We must care for it.